Nicky-Nan, Reservist eBook

“Oh, take her away!” sobbed Mrs Penhaligon,
suddenly breaking down. “Isn’t it
enough to lie awake at night with your man at the wars?
You’re a gentleman, sir, an’ a doctor,
an’ can understand. Do ’ee take her
away!”

But Nicky-Nan had pushed forward. “You
mean well, ma’am, I don’t doubt,”
he said, addressing Mrs Polsue. “But this
here War has got upon everybody’s nerves, in
a manner o’ speaking.”

“It doesn’t seem to trouble yours,”
retorted Mrs Polsue, at bay and vicious; “or
maybe it has, and that’s why you’re not
with the Reserve.”

Nicky-Nan flushed to the roots of his hair.
But he answered pacifically—­“Until
I go, ma’am, you may take it from me that Mrs
Penhaligon shan’t want. I fixed all that
up with her husband afore he left. So there’s
not need for you callin’ again, if you don’t
mind.”

He said it firmly, yet quite respectfully. One
or two of the women in the porch murmured approval.

Not so Mrs Climoe.

“O-oh!” said Mrs Climoe, half aloud and
all unheeded for the moment. “So that’s
the way the wind blows, sure enough!”

CHAPTER XV.

THE ’TATY-PATCH.

Nicky-Nan went back to his parlour, closed the door
carefully, mounted the platform again, and resumed
his plastering. He felt vexed with himself over
that little speech of bravado. It had been incautious,
with all those women listening.

Still it might be explained away, and easily enough.
That woman Polsue put everybody’s back up.
His words had been just a piece of bluff to get rid
of her.

He had succeeded, too. He chuckled, recalling
Mrs Polsue’s discomfiture; how with a final
sniff she had turned and passed out between the ironical
files that drew aside for her in the porchway. .
. . For a burden had fallen from his heart:
his little mistake, just now, weighed as nothing against
the assurance that Dr Mant would write a certificate
and settle these meddlesome idiots at the Troy Custom-house.
. . . Moreover Dr Mant, who passed for a knowledgeable
fellow in his profession, had as good as assured him
that his leg was nothing to die of; not just yet anyway.
Well, he would have it attended to, sometime; his
life was valuable now. But he wasn’t going
to hurry about it, if a sound leg meant his being
taken and ordered off to this dam-fool War. Nicky-Nan
pursed up his lips as he worked, whistling to himself
a cheerful, tuneless ditty. Some one tapped on
the door. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” answered the voice of
Mrs Penhaligon. “Can I come in?”

“No, you can’t!” he shouted.
“Here, wait a minute! . . . And what might
be the matter now?” he asked, as he opened the
door a very little way. “I’m sorry,
ma’am, that I can’t ask ’ee to step
inside; but there’s a tidyin’-up goin’
forward.”

“I’d as lief speak to ’ee here,
in the passage. Indeed I’d rather,”
said Mrs Penhaligon as he emerged, trowel in hand.
“Well, what is it?”